Scientists Get Smarter, Share To Learn About IQ

How many scientists does it take to correlate brain power with genetics? Answer: Lots.

In the previously stalled scientific inquiry into the relationship between brain functions and genetics the biggest problem had been sample size. But in a highly atypical instance of scientific group-Darwinism over 200 researchers decided to put aside ego and pool research data to move the ball forward.

“What’s really new here is this movement toward crowd-sourcing brain research,” said Paul Thompson, a professor of neurology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and senior author of one of the resulting papers. “This is an example of social networking in science, and it gives us a power we have not had.”

Two large aggregated research programs eventually joined forces leading to some significant findings:

Two genes that correlated strongly with overall brain size and the rate of brain atrophy with age.

Research into brain size also showed people with the larger brains tended to score slightly higher on a standardized test.

Roughly 10 percent of people possess the gene that correlates to slightly quicker atrophy of the hippocampus.